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[Draugoth]

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A new report from a creator using AI to help develop their game has revealed that Valve has started to crackdown on users intending to publish games that have AI-generated content in them.

Redditor u/potterharry97, has shared the message that they have received from the Steam team, and it has insisted that they have only one chance to remedy the inclusion of AI works.

After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [Game Name Here] which appears to belongs to one or more third parties. In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties.

As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game.

Though the creator went through the game by hand and made an attempt to remedy the situation, their re-application was formally denied a week later.

"App credits are usually non-refundable, but we'd like to make an exception here and offer you a refund," says the response from Steam. "Please confirm and we'll proceed."

Source

 

[RagnarokIV]

Can't stop progress.

 

[poppabk]

​

A new report from a creator using AI to help develop their game has revealed that Valve has started to crackdown on users intending to publish games that have AI-generated content in them.

Redditor u/potterharry97, has shared the message that they have received from the Steam team, and it has insisted that they have only one chance to remedy the inclusion of AI works.





Though the creator went through the game by hand and made an attempt to remedy the situation, their re-application was formally denied a week later.



Source

It's a difficult area for sure. But if the AI art has such an obvious resemblance to existing game art then they are probably right to reject it.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

good, to much ai "art" is copy past of real art with a few tweaks.

 

[M1chl]

Cringe

 

[ReBurn]

Bad for small indie devs if true.

 

[Fuz]

I'm torn on this.

I don't like walled gardens and regulating what can be sold and what people can buy, if it's legal.
But I also don't like AI generation and its implications.

 

[Nvzman]

Based Valve, as always.
If they ban it, there's probably a very good reason it's getting banned, my guess has to do with AI art typically leeching off of existing art which is a copyright/trademark legal nightmare waiting to blow up.

 

[Crayon]

The future is unsure but I'm in favor of falling on this side of thing for the time being. We might not be that far away from whole games being made with ai.

 

[jshackles]

Valve just covering their legal bases. AI generated art is legally ambiguous right now and there haven't been any clear cut distinction on intelectual property rights. Is it owned by the "artist" (the person who entered the prompt into the generator), or is it owned by the authors of the generator itself? And stickier still - if the generator was trained on copyrighted art from multiple different sources / rights holders, does it belong now to them?

I suppose this will be the norm for all gaming platforms, until this is sorted out from a legal standpoint.

 

[ssringo]

AI generated art with assets you don't own or have permission to use is a legal gray area so makes sense to err on the side of caution until its settled or we have regulations/laws.

 

[A.Romero]

But the message says copyrighter material, right? It's always haven been their policy to ban content that infringe on copyright, right?

 

[Shifty1897]

Good.

 

[ViolentP]

Nothing of value lost.

 

[Represent.]

Good.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

 

[SmokedMeat]

In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties.

Don’t blame Valve one bit.

 

[mckmas8808]

Based Valve, as always.
If they ban it, there's probably a very good reason it's getting banned, my guess has to do with AI art typically leeching off of existing art which is a copyright/trademark legal nightmare waiting to blow up.

After reading those Microsoft emails in the hearing................I've got tired of seeing so much hardcore Capitalism without any care in the world for the strength of the video game industry. So glad to see some companies still care about the health of the industry in general.

 

[twilo99]

Here we go.. this is going to get so abstract.

Game development is going to change at a very rapid pace, lots of studios are going to get left behind.

If you are worried about the “industry” AI is the real disruptive force, not things like gamepass.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

How is it any different than a human studying art and creating something new based upon it? I guess I'd have to see the infraction to really get a better idea. Maybe it's a straight rip effectively, but this area is going to cause a lot of problems.

 

[killatopak]

At one point it was amazing but now I can spot an AI art in a single look. Not for me.

 

[twilo99]

How is it any different than a human studying art and creating something new based upon it? I guess I'd have to see the infraction to really get a better idea. Maybe it's a straight rip effectively, but this area is going to cause a lot of problems.

Yes, it will be impossible to govern.

 

[Danknugz]

misleading thread title.

the distinction is that steam seems to require proof that the assets were made from ai trained on or used to modify assets you created yourself and not say, ripped from another game and modified to try and hide your tracks.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Good. AI is supposed to give you a leg up when you lack resources, and not remix copyrighted content for your lazy ass. If Valve wouldn't crack the whip, this would be no different from asset flipping, except asset flipping was fair game because those assets being flipped weren't a subject to copyright.

 

[Trilobit]

good, to much ai "art" is copy past of real art with a few tweaks.

Artists:

 

[winjer]

AI is still uncharted territory for copyright.
So it's normal that a company like Valve will be cautious about it.
There will come a time when a big court case about AI generated content will appear. And probably, it will be a clusterfuck for anyone involved.

 

[12Goblins]

Based newell

 

[K2D]

Better allow for use of AI that tracks which artists are drawn upon for any given product and see to it that they are payed for their use. Shouldn't be hard to keep track of either. ~Transparity~

Can't keep it out AI complety for ever..

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

How is it any different than a human studying art and creating something new based upon it? I guess I'd have to see the infraction to really get a better idea. Maybe it's a straight rip effectively, but this area is going to cause a lot of problems.

Yup, people are “trained on copyrighted art” as well. I don’t see how this is any different. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement regardless whether it was a human or AI that created if.

Heck, the way many film scores are made nowadays is by taking some song from another film + having the composer make something as close as possible without infringing.

 

[justonething]

Guess that fat fuck Gabe hasn't seen the mounting cases of artists being accused of using AI art without using AI.
At any rate, this is a hit to critical thinking and those fools in this thread celebrating it are incredibly lost. On top of that, it's not a train that can be stopped.

 

[BennyBlanco]

After reading those Microsoft emails in the hearing................I've got tired of seeing so much hardcore Capitalism without any care in the world for the strength of the video game industry. So glad to see some companies still care about the health of the industry in general.

Valve is the only benevolent force in gaming that is also a huge company

 

[Guerilla Munch]

Lol are they going to "ban" AI generated code also? How can they even prove if something was generated?

 

[M1chl]

Ai generator are not just the pictures, you can for example paint a map and Ai fills it with environment of you choosing, so UE 5.2 project will be banned as well or something?

 

[brian0057]

It seems a lot of you people really need to watch this.

 

[Gambit2483]

Fuck A.I.

Has noone seen Terminator???

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

Good.

 

[ChoosableOne]

People are jealous of machines, it's unbelievable.

 

[Holammer]

It won't be long before AI graphics/music & voice acting will be in the toolbox for big developers (already is tbh).
I think this is a stab at unserious actors flooding the store with cookie cutter Match 3 porn games, stuff that's trying to game the system.

 

[wipeout364]

This won’t last. The AI pipelines will create content so fast every game will soon be using them for better or worse.

I agree that they need to police obvious copyright infringement but that is going to be very hard/impossible to do as time passes.

 

[mortal]

I doubt this policy will last.

 

[UnNamed]

How Valve can say an asset is made by an artist or by an AI?

 

[Clear]

This won’t last. The AI pipelines will create content so fast every game will soon be using them for better or worse.

I agree that they need to police obvious copyright infringement but that is going to be very hard/impossible to do as time passes.

Nah, you're missing the forest for the trees.

If there's potential for liability, it will need to be monitored - most likely by other AI agents like we have on YT today...
...And no doubt just as fallible and prone to generating false positives!

 

[Gambit2483]

Pro A.I. = Anti Humanity..??

What seems like science fiction today could be future dependant tomorrow.

A.I. needs limits. Strong limits. That don't/can't deter or infringe on humanities necessities.

 

[SF Kosmo]

There are a number of notable titles like High on Life and Firmament that openly use AI assets. Is Valve going to apply this fairly to all?

AI generated art does pass the bar for novelty needed for copyright, I don't think this is really a legal issue like that. There may be questions about public license and training datasets, but yeah.

 

[wipeout364]

Nah, you're missing the forest for the trees.

If there's potential for liability, it will need to be monitored - most likely by other AI agents like we have on YT today...
...And no doubt just as fallible and prone to generating false positives!

How do you monitor everything on the internet? That’s what these AI program will be using as an a construction base. They are easy to catch now but these are very early days. It will be interesting when they start iterating on their own productions.

I am not an expert but the AI art, storytelling and music all seem very advanced for something that didn’t seem to really exist 5 years ago.

 

[mckmas8808]

Valve is the only benevolent force in gaming that is also a huge company

Gotta agree here.

 

[Fuz]

It seems a lot of you people really need to watch this.

Artists ranting for 2 hours on how the bad AI is gonna ruin the world?
(No, not gonna watch it, I'm just guessing, considering what I'm reading from my artists friends and other friends in entertainment)

I haven't seen them shed a tear when small shops closed because malls opened and they flocked them.

 

[KormaChameleon]

If it's your own written AI that is being used to create your own content, fair enough. Hopefully this will reduce some shovel wear that you see on Steam Store.

 

[Wildebeest]

Do you legally have to declare that you used an algorithm to generate part of your work? Are they also going to ban games with procedural generation?

 

[brian0057]

Artists ranting for 2 hours on how the bad AI is gonna ruin the world?
(No, not gonna watch it, I'm just guessing, considering what I'm reading from my artists friends and other friends in entertainment)

I haven't seen them shed a tear when small shops closed because malls opened and they flocked them.

Surprisingly, his argument isn't that all A.I. art is bad. It's the theft that he takes issue with. As do I.
And the Supreme Court already set a precedent. If it wasn't made by a human, it can't receive copyright proteccion.